Featured Artist: High Valley

Alberta sibling country music trio hitting the right harmoniesPhoto by
submitted photo

They’re three brothers out of Blumenort, Alta., which is eight hours north of Edmonton and consists of a church, a school and a grocery store, which, if you’re of a generous frame of mind, could constitute a village.

The winters, says Brad Rempel, big brother to Bryan and Curtis and lead singer in their band High Valley, are hard core. Nearest town is La Crete (pop. 2,166) 18 clicks away and in summer you have to take a ferry on the Peace River to get there and in winter, the truck loaded with hockey gear, you go over an ice bridge.

It’s also a mostly Mennonite community where nearly everyone speaks English and/or low German. Rempel’s grandparents were born in Canada in a Mennonite grouping and moved down to Mexico to live in an “old colony” — ie, horse and buggy, no electricity — community. Both Rempel’s parents were born there but when Rempel’s grandpa broke down and bought himself a 1953 GMC grain truck he was excommunicated and banished from the colony.

“My dad and his brothers and sisters,” says Rempel, “and 10 other kids from another Mennonite family all rode the box on that grain truck with four adults. There were like 24 people on this truck and they rode all the way to Canada from Mexico. The truck’s still in the family today, my grandpa had an auction sale before he passed away and my cousin Frank bought the grain truck so it’s still in the family.”

As they got their footing in northern Alberta Rempel’s parents fell in love with country music and he and the other siblings — there are three older sisters — all learned to sing accompanied by mother’s 12-string guitar. And he ascribes the singing at Mennonite church with High Valley’s flawless harmonies.

The group is up for a best new artist award at this year’s Canadian Country Music Awards — also group of the year and mandolinist Curtis for instrument — but they’ve actually been together for some time, starting a good 15 years ago when Bryan was nine years old and Brad was 12. Curtis joined about seven years ago.

They’ve been schooled on the road while performing over 100 shows a year for the past 10 years, travelling as far afield as Montana, North Dakota, B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan. In the last couple of years since they started making records they’ve been out constantly sharing stages with the likes of Dierks Bentley, Keith Urban, LeAnn Rimes, Reba McEntire and Paul Brandt. Especially Paul Brandt.

Six years ago Brandt saw them playing a gospel showcase at the CCMAs in Regina and left his card. They contacted him and he asked if the group would open for him on a few dates. It was the first time they’d been able to play in front of substantial audiences and they haven’t looked back. Since then Brandt has helped write and produce High Valley’s first album and put them on the main CCMA stage.

“I think our Facebook went from, like, no fans to quite a few thousand fans in about 24 hours from that performance,” says Rempel. “Every time we think he’s done helping us out he always comes up with another idea.”

From High Valley’s new, self-titled album, today’s featured free download is “On the Combine.”

“Paul Brandt and myself wrote that song,” says Rempel. “The song started from Paul telling me, when you guys look at songs you want to put out there to let people know what High Valley is, it better be true about what you guys are, what you stand for. He’s very smart and very right. And he asked me where I learned about country music and I told him the story.

“Growing up we had two combines and one of them had an FM radio and the other one had no radio. I always picked the one that had the radio and I’d be listening to Alabama and Diamond Rio and whenever my dad would talk to me on the two-way I’d quickly turn off the radio. So I told him about that and that’s how the song started.”

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